Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Sales, Systems, and Scale: Business Growth Lessons with Entrepreneurial Maven Bryan Durkin

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Sales, Systems, and Scale: Business Growth Lessons with Entrepreneurial Maven Bryan Durkin · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Imagine for a moment having a thriving business in the perfect location and overnight watching everything collapse due to unforeseen economic turmoil.
• 0:11
  What would you do?
• 0:13
  How resilient are you in the face of such unexpected challenges?
• 0:17
  Our guest this week is Brian Durkin, founder and CEO of MVP Team and author and host of the Driveway Marketing Podcast.
• 0:29
  Brian has journeyed through these entrepreneurial highs and lows, from creating and selling a successful business to real estate investment challenges and ultimately finding his voice in sales and marketing.
• 0:43
  We'll dive into his journey from a young entrepreneur to a successful business leader.
• 0:49
  We'll explore his insights on business scaling, the importance of systems, and how his self published book became a powerful tool in his consulting arsenal.
• 1:00
  Brian will also discuss his approach to the ready fire aim mentality in entrepreneurship, the significance of effective communication in business, and how his Mastermind group's accountability propelled his success.
• 1:15
  Get ready for valuable lessons on scaling businesses, managing virtual teams, and enhancing customer service.
• 1:23
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:29
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Beyond Fulfillment Podcast.
• 1:34
  I'm your host, Dave Goulis.
• 1:36
  This week my guest is the founder and the CEO of MVP Team Pro, author and podcast host Brian Durkin.
• 1:46
  Hey everyone.
• 1:47
  Hey, how's it going?
• 1:49
  Yeah, going great, going great.
• 1:51
  Thank you so much for being here.
• 1:53
  So, Brian, you've had a 27 year entrepreneurial career, lots of twists and turns.
• 2:00
  Can you just take us back from the beginning and tell us how it all got started?
• 2:05
  So like a lot of entrepreneurs, it kind of starts when you're young, at least a lot of people I know, I always felt like sales and selling was second nature to me.
• 2:14
  And people go, well, what, what is it?
• 2:16
  Because it's so natural for you.
• 2:18
  It's always so hard for me.
• 2:19
  And I go, well, I don't really even think about it because it's like walking or riding a bike.
• 2:22
  And then I go back to, I was like, you know, 10 years old, a neighbor and I would sell, literally.
• 2:26
  Like, his dad was a Hallmark salesman.
• 2:28
  And so we, we had a deal that if we sold whatever he sold that were samples, we could keep, I don't know, half of it or 3/4 or whatever it was.
• 2:35
  And so I was like 10 years old and I go out like on a, you know, two weeks for Mother's Day and we, I was making like 200 bucks, like walking around the neighborhood.
• 2:41
  I'm like, this is like real money, so this is easy.
• 2:44
  So I learned at an early age if you help people solve problems, and you can sell them stuff.
• 2:48
  You can make some bank.
• 2:49
  And so I always kind of.
• 2:51
  That was kind of the back.
• 2:51
  That's kind of how I.
• 2:52
  That was my background, how I got started.
• 2:53
  Right.
• 2:55
  And then like a lot of us that went to college, we got our first jobs, and then we started looking what was happening in the marketplace.
• 3:02
  And you kind of go, well, geez, I could do this for myself and make way more money.
• 3:07
  So I was in my 20s.
• 3:09
  I was in my early 20s.
• 3:10
  I ended up starting a division of a consulting company that was kind of.
• 3:13
  I ran it, and I had P and L responsibility and did that for a couple years.
• 3:16
  It kind of went its way and I went and worked for some big companies selling really big stuff.
• 3:21
  I was in my mid-20s selling, you know, 20, $30 million a year to the Fortune 100 companies.
• 3:26
  A lot of Fortune 5 companies are my clients.
• 3:28
  Really lucky.
• 3:29
  Had some great experiences.
• 3:30
  And then, of course, I went back on my own, said, hey, I could do a better job myself.
• 3:35
  And that was back in the mid-90s to early 2000s.
• 3:40
  I sold my business in 04.
• 3:42
  I sold my interests in my document management company.
• 3:45
  Then I basically picked up my family, relocated into Florida, and then about every 18 months, I reinvent myself.
• 3:52
  So I'm the classical entrepreneurs entrepreneur.
• 3:54
  People go, what do you do?
• 3:55
  And I say, that's a really interesting question.
• 3:57
  Right.
• 3:57
  But the commonality is that, as we talked about before, the call is, you know, I've really been successful, I think, because I've just been able to talk to people and help solve problems.
• 4:07
  So as things have gone some, sometimes we don't make profits or the model doesn't scale, or quite honestly, I don't want to do it anymore.
• 4:14
  But it's this evolution of like, talking to people, understanding what they're trying to do, and then figuring out how you can solve it.
• 4:20
  Like, I love being an inventor of solving business problems as it relates to marketing and sales so that people that are not good at it, a lot of them can have a better chance of kind of growing and
• 4:30
  scaling their business.
• 4:31
  So that's really.
• 4:32
  So helping people grow at scale is kind of my bread and butter.
• 4:34
  So.
• 4:35
  Been for a long time.
• 4:36
  Okay.
• 4:37
  Yeah.
• 4:37
  And I love that distinction too, where you boil down the essence of sales and business to just helping people solve their problems.
• 4:44
  Right, yeah.
• 4:45
  Because people think it's like, now I understand with funnels and technologies and stuff like that, there's a different.
• 4:49
  The.
• 4:50
  The process is different, but the methods behind it are still the same.
• 4:53
  Identify a need get someone to make a decision.
• 4:56
  Hopefully they buy from you.
• 4:56
  Right?
• 4:57
  And in, in, you know, in a funnel, that might be a minute or three minutes, but in a long sales cycle for a, you know, $10 million product, it might be three months or six months or even longer.
• 5:07
  But the process is the same stuff, right?
• 5:09
  So people don't realize, like, it's, it's just the same stuff.
• 5:15
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• 5:17
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• 5:19
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• 5:22
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• 5:27
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• 5:33
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• 5:39
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:40
  So, so let's go back to that, that first company that you, you built and sold, that was over the course of what, seven years?
• 5:47
  Seven years.
• 5:48
  So we started it while I was working for another company.
• 5:50
  That was a side hustle.
• 5:52
  Before, side hustles were a thing.
• 5:53
  Sorry, I didn't know that was the thing.
• 5:55
  Because now we all have side hustles.
• 5:56
  This was, it was a side big gig.
• 5:58
  I had a partner who was in a different industry and I was like, you're crazy.
• 6:02
  There's got to be a technological way to handle this.
• 6:04
  He was in the document management business.
• 6:05
  And so, like, you're, you're driving around all over the metropolitan New York area delivering files.
• 6:10
  Gotta be better way.
• 6:11
  So we created a scan on Demand portal.
• 6:13
  In 97, 98, we were scanning files and then delivering them electronically to doctors and lawyers all over the metro area of New York City.
• 6:20
  And did that for a year or two.
• 6:22
  And then we ended up falling into a niche where we were servicing larger companies.
• 6:27
  But we couldn't afford.
• 6:28
  We couldn't.
• 6:29
  Not that we couldn't afford.
• 6:30
  We just couldn't get the documents processed fast enough.
• 6:33
  So I met someone who was doing the work at the time in India.
• 6:37
  And so it allowed us to go from two employees in the US to I think, 24, 25 employees in like two and a half years.
• 6:47
  And then I had a staff of over 200 of them doing the data entry work for us overseas in India back in 98, 99, 2000.
• 6:54
  And we were, we rocked and rolled.
• 6:55
  We would do, I think when, when I left, we were doing about 300,000 documents processed a day.
• 7:03
  Like, that's crazy, right?
• 7:04
  So, like, it's just so.
• 7:06
  And what did we do?
• 7:07
  We stuck to it.
• 7:08
  We got good at doing simple things simply and just, you Know, we were in the pennies business, but we would do, you know, a couple hundred thousand pennies a day.
• 7:15
  It certainly adds up.
• 7:18
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 7:19
  And like you said, keeping it simple, right.
• 7:21
  Not trying to branch out too, too much, just staying focused on your core competency.
• 7:26
  You think that's why you scaled so quickly?
• 7:28
  I think that.
• 7:29
  And I was really, well, luckily, you know, it's all people thing.
• 7:33
  Right.
• 7:33
  I was an idea guy, but I learned that I didn't have a right hand man to kind of see it, see that vision to fruition.
• 7:40
  So I very kind of early on kept breaking the system and I brought in an operations partner and he was fantastic.
• 7:46
  He, I, I key him with most of what we, what we were able to do.
• 7:49
  I was able to sell it, but he was able to make sure we could deliver it.
• 7:52
  So when you're in any kind of, you know, that's a, that's also another kind of entrepreneurial conundrum is, you know, what if I grow too big?
• 7:59
  Well, try to break it, right?
• 8:00
  It's, it's way more fun to try to break something when you're being successful than when you suck at it and don't have anybody, nobody coming to your door and like, you know, whenever your next project's coming from or
• 8:10
  your next sales coming from, whatever.
• 8:11
  So I, it's a whole lot more fun.
• 8:13
  It's still frustrating, right?
• 8:14
  But I think that's, that was kind of things like, you know, and that never ends for some of us.
• 8:20
  For me, that never ends.
• 8:21
  I'm always wondering how I can break stuff.
• 8:22
  I've gotten better at learning what not to break.
• 8:26
  But I also am not afraid of it.
• 8:28
  Right.
• 8:28
  I think along for a lot of us, we're afraid of breaking sales because what happens if I need to hire someone?
• 8:33
  Well then hire someone.
• 8:34
  What if I don't?
• 8:35
  You know, what, what if I don't make any money?
• 8:37
  Well, figure out what you can do.
• 8:38
  Make money on.
• 8:39
  Raise your prices till people stop buying.
• 8:40
  Right.
• 8:40
  Whatever it is.
• 8:41
  So, so that, that type of mentality, maybe we call it the ready, fire, aim mentality where you, you move fast and break stuff.
• 8:50
  I mean certainly there's a certain percentage of entrepreneurs that are just wired that way and, and more just, I guess prone to just act first and, and maybe think, think about the consequences later.
• 9:02
  I'm laughing hysterically.
• 9:05
  It's true.
• 9:07
  Yeah.
• 9:07
  I mean did that's, that's been your approach to your whole career?
• 9:10
  It sounds like it's, it's definitely has been but the ready at least in my case, that ready, fire, aim approach isn't an act.
• 9:19
  There's a lot of thinking, a lot of wondering behind the scenes going, I, you know, how, like, how can I do this?
• 9:25
  Can you think about what?
• 9:27
  Can you anticipate the problems going in?
• 9:29
  Like, I know going into projects where stuff's going to break, right?
• 9:32
  So that, that's, that's part of it is like understanding your weaknesses, your team's weaknesses, your.
• 9:37
  Whatever you're selling or whatever you're doing, understanding those weaknesses.
• 9:41
  Because if you, this is, I think, the biggest differentiator.
• 9:44
  If a lot of people say, well, I can't do that because I don't have the people.
• 9:47
  But if you understand how to get it done and you, and you partner with the client saying, listen, I can do this for you.
• 9:53
  And it's, it normally would take me two weeks, but I'm going to need four weeks because I have this gap in my process and I know I need to do it.
• 9:58
  I'm going to need a week to fix that.
• 9:59
  And if you tell them that up front and you're fair about it and you are a good communicator, my experience is nine times out of 10, they're going to say I like, because people buy from people they trust.
• 10:08
  I like that you see that because I also see that gap in the process.
• 10:11
  That's why I'm coming to you instead of me.
• 10:12
  Because I don't have those people either, or that process or that product or whatever.
• 10:16
  I'll wait the week.
• 10:17
  As long as you, you know, as long as you can do it.
• 10:19
  Now, don't take on stuff you know, you can't do.
• 10:21
  If you, if you need to buy $100,000 piece of equipment and you have no way to get that $100,000 piece of equipment and you can't rent it or borrow it or, you know, barter it, then maybe that's not
• 10:30
  the case.
• 10:31
  But, you know, no, no going that.
• 10:33
  But know where your gaps are, right?
• 10:35
  Not just random.
• 10:36
  Elon Musk doesn't just do things because he thinks, like, you know, we're going to do this now.
• 10:40
  He, he has an idea of how it's going to happen.
• 10:43
  He doesn't know how long it's going to take or what it's going to take to do that, but they, they know generally that they can do it.
• 10:49
  Like, if I told you I was going to open up a surgery center, people, my friends, will look at me like nuts because I don't know the first thing about medical.
• 10:54
  I'm Not a doctor, I don't know anything about that.
• 10:56
  That's insane.
• 10:57
  But you know, other things about it.
• 10:59
  You certainly could, you certainly could do that.
• 11:01
  But ready Fire aims a thing, but don't let it stop you from doing something.
• 11:05
  But understand that it could.
• 11:06
  It does backfire too, by the way.
• 11:08
  Sometimes it backfires.
• 11:09
  Things are out of your control.
• 11:10
  Right.
• 11:10
  So sure, sure.
• 11:12
  And another topic we touched on before the show too, which kind of lines with that topic is you at one point had, it had a challenge.
• 11:22
  Getting ready to get ready.
• 11:24
  Oh yeah, that's a, I don't know where I got that term from.
• 11:26
  So, you know, especially if you're a solopreneur, small business, couple people, right?
• 11:32
  So there's this idea of like, I keep getting ready, I keep getting ready.
• 11:34
  I'll be, you know, I'll take this course.
• 11:36
  That was a big thing, you know, 10, 12 years ago.
• 11:39
  I was, you know, I was coaching people.
• 11:40
  I was like, oh, this is great, I'll take this, I'll get certified in that.
• 11:43
  I'll do this, I'll do that.
• 11:44
  No, no, just do it.
• 11:45
  Because what happens is, and we talked about it before, we have this innate.
• 11:49
  There's something that holds us back that says, well, what if I go all in and I prepare and nobody buys my stuff or no one takes my course or no one does my program.
• 11:57
  Am I a failure?
• 11:58
  Well, you have to understand why it's not working.
• 12:01
  One is because you spend all your time getting ready to get ready.
• 12:03
  Just talk to people, just say, hey, this is what I do.
• 12:06
  Let your customers or your colleagues or your friends or your prospects help determine if your product or service is going to come to fruition.
• 12:14
  Right.
• 12:15
  Right now I'm, I kind of, I'm kind of known as I, I live in die by having tech enabled virtual teams.
• 12:21
  That's our MVP Team Pro business.
• 12:23
  We help companies use teams, remote teams, mostly in the Philippines, a little bit in South America and some in the US get more stuff done.
• 12:30
  Right.
• 12:30
  So if they're in the home services business and they're not answering the phone, hey, I got a guy.
• 12:36
  We have people that are trained to do that, help you do that.
• 12:38
  Oh, you're not doing follow ups.
• 12:40
  Boom, boom.
• 12:41
  Like so we.
• 12:41
  So that, that for me was this gap because a lot of entrepreneurs is why I can't do that.
• 12:45
  I don't have people.
• 12:46
  Well, if we can help you identify where these are and they're consistent enough, let's find other people to do that that are qualified, that may be in the Us, maybe not shit wage, excuse my French, but wages are
• 12:57
  incredibly high.
• 12:58
  But they're not, you know, we have these, you know, government mandated wage increases that, you know, I guess they, they seem to make sense in some ways, but the laws of supply and demand don't change.
• 13:07
  So if you artificially, you know, create a supply constriction because of a wage hike, the laws of supply demand says those wages are going to go some go somewhere else.
• 13:16
  Now they may be into another state, they may be another market, they may be another customer, but that's just the nature of those laws.
• 13:21
  And so take advantage of those.
• 13:23
  But, but you can't really think about.
• 13:26
  I forget where we were.
• 13:28
  I'm.
• 13:28
  I'm kind of on a post caffeinated roll here.
• 13:32
  But you know, you don't, but that's, that's a good problem to have because you're actually acting enough thinking about it.
• 13:38
  How's that?
• 13:39
  Right?
• 13:39
  Time to act and not think.
• 13:41
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 13:43
  So, okay, so you, you had the side hustle.
• 13:46
  That turns into a much bigger business.
• 13:48
  You sell that company and then what happens next?
• 13:51
  I decided to become a real estate investor in Naples, where I live.
• 13:55
  Great idea.
• 13:57
  Then 2008, 2010 comes, not such a great idea because the world ended.
• 14:01
  So I wasn't a real estate.
• 14:02
  I was, I was a really good real estate investor for a while and then I really sucked at it because the world ended as we knew it.
• 14:09
  And then from then I just basically, you know, I was forced to reinvent myself and I went back to my roots, which is I know how to help people sell stuff.
• 14:18
  So either as a consultant or as a support service or as a marketing person kind of, that's.
• 14:23
  We all have these fallback tendencies, you know, you probably have them too, right, where you know, we have these fallback skills that help us do that.
• 14:30
  And so that gets you through.
• 14:32
  And then I really, about six or seven years ago, I guess was 2017.
• 14:37
  So it's probably seven years ago, maybe eight years ago.
• 14:39
  A light went off in my head.
• 14:41
  I need to help more people, which has kind of always been my goal.
• 14:44
  They always need help getting sales and marketing support done.
• 14:48
  And so I started adventuring down the road of doing more of that and then getting other people to fulfill it.
• 14:53
  And then my wife said to me at an event, we were at a big marketing event.
• 14:57
  And they said, my wife goes, you can't go in a circle.
• 15:01
  We were, we were somewhat successful.
• 15:02
  It was kind of, you know, we would get a couple clients, I would break stuff.
• 15:05
  I Would reinvent things.
• 15:06
  I would kind of get in this cycle.
• 15:07
  And she's like, you need to go to that room and join this mastermind that was in a Dan Kennedy group called Peak Performers.
• 15:13
  And that changed my life.
• 15:15
  Literally being in a group of smart entrepreneurs who were at all stages, from startups to guys running $100 million businesses, sharing and holding you accountable to your ideas and telling you that's a good idea or not, and not
• 15:29
  because they like you or don't like you.
• 15:30
  Your friends, I'll tell you it's a great idea or they don't understand it or your family.
• 15:34
  Everyone's baby's beautiful.
• 15:35
  But these other entrepreneurs are gonna say, yeah, would you like permission for me to tell you to shoot your idea down?
• 15:41
  Cause it's a really crappy idea.
• 15:42
  Right.
• 15:42
  Kind of stuff.
• 15:43
  So being around smart people, I think is the other part of it is that you have to surround yourself with, you know, incredibly smart people.
• 15:50
  And they're probably not sitting in your living room getting ready to get.
• 15:53
  They're not watching your course on whatever that you got for $47.
• 15:57
  That was originally $10,000 two years ago.
• 15:58
  Now it's on sale for 47.
• 16:00
  And it's only 400 hours of stuff that you're never going to implement.
• 16:06
  Yeah, yeah.
• 16:07
  So the Mastermind group, we hear so much about those and there's a lot of them out there.
• 16:11
  But like, like you said, this one was life changing for you.
• 16:14
  So what about that do you think made such a big difference?
• 16:17
  Was it just that, like the intimacy of the group and having direct connection to these successful people.
• 16:23
  So the group at the time was pretty big, about 50 people.
• 16:26
  I think part of it was we were put this was the Dan Kennedy group.
• 16:28
  Dan's now part of Russell Brunson's magnetic marketing organ.
• 16:32
  And so what tied us together was this belief in a certain style of marketing and a certain mindset of success.
• 16:39
  Right.
• 16:39
  So we were people that we would go to these events and we'd learn the new.
• 16:42
  We would learn the new.
• 16:43
  Some guy would be on stage saying, here's the greatest way to do this or here's the greatest way to do that, and here's the greatest way this.
• 16:48
  And Dan would always tell you, as he called himself a renegade, he would say, don't do a hundred things.
• 16:52
  Pick one thing and implement it like crazy.
• 16:55
  And then decide if it's going to work or not going to work.
• 16:57
  And if it doesn't work, kick it to the curb and go on to the next one.
• 17:00
  And so When I was in that group, I learned very much so to understand I had certain gifts that I was holding back.
• 17:07
  Great.
• 17:08
  I also had certain things that I thought I was really good at that I really sucked at, and I need to let them go.
• 17:13
  And the third thing which was the most important was the people that win at business the most get the most done.
• 17:19
  You know, they always.
• 17:19
  There's an old top.
• 17:20
  There's an old saying that says, if you want to get anything done, go to the busiest guy in town.
• 17:24
  These guys, these people that I know, these run these incredible businesses that they're just, they're working.
• 17:30
  I mean, they're not killing themselves working wise, but they're always getting.
• 17:33
  So they're learning how to get across the finish line and then see if it works.
• 17:36
  They're always trying new ad campaigns, they're always trying new marketing techniques.
• 17:41
  They're always talking about hiring people.
• 17:43
  I'm sure they fire people too, right?
• 17:44
  But they're always implementing something because the people that relentlessly implement something are the ones that are always kind of rising to the top.
• 17:52
  Right?
• 17:52
  So that was the big takeaway, was I was too busy getting ready and I wasn't implementing.
• 17:57
  And once I started implementing, like, I'm just doing this and I'll figure it out as I go, life changed, right?
• 18:03
  Because then all of a sudden, I was the go to guy.
• 18:05
  Hey, Brian, I need your help with this.
• 18:06
  I need your help with that.
• 18:07
  So that's why we've kind of gotten this small customer segment, but lots of touches.
• 18:12
  You know, three customers.
• 18:14
  We probably do a hundred things a month for a hunt for three customers.
• 18:17
  That's a lot of stuff that gets done.
• 18:19
  And they don't even know what's going on.
• 18:21
  But we just know we're an integral part of their organization.
• 18:23
  And so that really, that really helps because we help them implement.
• 18:27
  I have a friend of mine who has another mastermind group that I'm a part of.
• 18:31
  He says if you don't implement, you'll never profit.
• 18:34
  So that's kind of the, the next, you know, the previous part of stop getting ready to get ready.
• 18:38
  Okay, what's next?
• 18:39
  You got to implement, because if you don't implement, you're never gonna.
• 18:42
  You're never gonna profit.
• 18:43
  Right.
• 18:44
  So do you see that as like the, the biggest obstacle for the, like, the entrepreneurs that you work with is.
• 18:51
  I think, I think it's the biggest problem with entrepreneurs that I don't know is that they're too busy thinking about something and not busy doing it.
• 18:57
  Right.
• 18:58
  So if it's a, you know, if you think about you and I, I'm sure you and I, you know, people in your community that are in the, let's say they're a home service business.
• 19:06
  Every town, you know, you know, someone in your world's a carpet cleaner, you, someone who's a realtor, you know, someone who's insurance agent.
• 19:11
  And they all talk about, well, hey, I get my business from referrals.
• 19:15
  And then my answer is, well, what's your referral system look like?
• 19:17
  How many referrals did you get last month?
• 19:19
  How many referrals are you going to get next month?
• 19:20
  How many referrals are you gonna get three months from now?
• 19:22
  What's the aver value of that referral?
• 19:23
  Then they go, oh, I don't really have a system.
• 19:25
  I just kind of hope that the phone rings.
• 19:28
  So there's a difference between having a referral system that's been implemented that you do even when you don't have time and a.
• 19:36
  I hope the phone rings.
• 19:37
  Right.
• 19:37
  A lot of times.
• 19:38
  You know, a lot of companies sitting around, well, we've been in business for 50 years.
• 19:42
  Well, great.
• 19:43
  How long have you been profitable for?
• 19:45
  How long have you been profitable for 50 years.
• 19:46
  How many companies have you bought?
• 19:48
  Um, so does that, does that answer your question?
• 19:50
  I kind of, kind of feel, yeah.
• 19:52
  Good.
• 19:53
  It's not, it sounds, yeah.
• 19:54
  Like you said, the lack of implementing, getting ready to get ready and just not taking the actions to really even see if, if something's a good idea or not.
• 20:02
  And that's really going to be your best feedback is, is like the results.
• 20:07
  Yeah.
• 20:07
  And I, and I, Someone asked me this, just one of my team members asked me this.
• 20:11
  It says, why do you go to these events?
• 20:13
  I go, sometimes I go because my customers are there.
• 20:15
  Great, great place to hang out.
• 20:17
  Sometimes I go because it's an, it's an industry I'm interested in either personally, professionally or, you know, whatever, and I don't know anything about it.
• 20:24
  So now that Covid's over, right, we're back to going to in person events.
• 20:28
  Find events with like minded people.
• 20:30
  Right.
• 20:31
  So if you're in a certain industry or trade, go to those, maybe there's a certain, you know, I'm a Tony Robbins guy.
• 20:37
  I kind of fell into that niche.
• 20:38
  You know, go to a Tony Robbins event or not, if you don't like him, whatever.
• 20:42
  Find something that is, is suitable to where you are in your life and where.
• 20:48
  Because you're gonna find yourself surrounded by like again, back to my Dan Kennedy thing, they were all like, we all were.
• 20:54
  We call it Planet Dan.
• 20:55
  It's a little crazy.
• 20:56
  We're all Planet Dan people.
• 20:57
  We all get what Planet Dan does.
• 20:58
  And as Dan, he got sick and had some health challenges and isn't as active as he used to be.
• 21:03
  But he wants his teachings to continue on.
• 21:05
  And it's happening at some real high levels.
• 21:07
  If you follow people like Alex Hermosi or Frank Kern or, you know, Russell Brunson or some of these other guys, you know, they, they, he.
• 21:15
  He was taught by Dan.
• 21:16
  Correct.
• 21:17
  Directly.
• 21:17
  Now there's the secondary and third tier people that are teaching Dan's teachings that weren't taught by Dan directly.
• 21:22
  Right.
• 21:23
  So.
• 21:23
  But the reality of it is, is that, you know, they go to events, they learn people, they try something, they try different stuff, right?
• 21:29
  So, you know, if you don't try different stuff, you're just gonna be doing the same stuff everyone else is doing.
• 21:33
  And what's, you know, then you're, you're, you're finding yourself in that.
• 21:37
  What do they call it?
• 21:38
  The red ocean.
• 21:38
  Right.
• 21:39
  Where you're.
• 21:39
  See, you're with the same oceans.
• 21:40
  Everybody else.
• 21:42
  Yeah.
• 21:44
  Okay.
• 21:44
  And along the way you wrote.
• 21:46
  Is it two books?
• 21:48
  So I wrote one book.
• 21:49
  I wrote a book called Stuck on First.
• 21:50
  The Nine Positions of a Playoff Ready Business.
• 21:52
  Talks about how to build and scale your business.
• 21:54
  I tie, hence the MVP inner circle, the MVP team pro.
• 21:57
  Everything is tied to business and baseball.
• 22:00
  I kind of, when I was trying to figure out where I wanted to go, I had a client who called himself a first base coach because he's like, I got to get on base.
• 22:09
  And that was his great thing.
• 22:10
  He was a great idea guy.
• 22:11
  He could never get anybody across the plate.
• 22:14
  So I was like, hey, at the time I called myself, well, I'm the third base coach because I want to make sure you get home.
• 22:18
  Because the only way that, the only way it matters is if you score runs, no one cares about how many hits you got.
• 22:23
  They care about how many times you got across the plate.
• 22:25
  So that kind of got me started about the book.
• 22:27
  And then Tony talked about tell is your business stuck on first?
• 22:30
  I talk about it in the book.
• 22:31
  Literally, I'm at an event, I'm in the third row, and I'm staring at this big giant guy going, your curses like crazy.
• 22:37
  You know, if you're not doing something in your business, you're stuck on first.
• 22:40
  And I'm going, oh, my God.
• 22:41
  That was my whole thing.
• 22:42
  So I wrote, I wrote my book about it.
• 22:44
  It's going on seven years, I think seven or eight years now.
• 22:47
  And it's been a great.
• 22:49
  It's a great tool.
• 22:49
  It's a.
• 22:50
  It's an easy read.
• 22:51
  There's typos in it.
• 22:53
  It's not perfect, but it's about how to build and scale the business.
• 22:56
  That makes sense to you, right?
• 22:58
  Because my wife has a business where it's her and assistant.
• 23:01
  I've got a team.
• 23:01
  She wants nothing to do with having a team.
• 23:03
  I want nothing to do with me and an assistant.
• 23:06
  Right?
• 23:06
  So every business has different, you know, every has different needs or what that scale is.
• 23:11
  So it kind of talks about that, and then it really talks about the importance of systems.
• 23:16
  And I didn't know this at the time.
• 23:17
  When I built my business, we built systems.
• 23:20
  I didn't know they were systems.
• 23:21
  It was just pain relief.
• 23:22
  You know, we had.
• 23:24
  We were scanning pieces of paper, right?
• 23:26
  We had seven processes that, from the box getting picked up to going back in the warehouse.
• 23:31
  We had seven things that had to happen in order for the customer to view it.
• 23:34
  Everything had between, I don't know, three, five, or seven steps at each level of process, and we could check every way along the way.
• 23:40
  That's how we scale, because people learn how to do it, then they learn how to figure out where the mistakes were.
• 23:46
  So at the time, I didn't know it was some great thing to do.
• 23:49
  I probably should have packaged it and sold it as a course.
• 23:52
  And at the time, I probably kind of sold it for 25,000 bucks a pop or something, but it was just pain relief to me.
• 23:57
  It was just literally like, how do I not feel the pain from selling a product that people wanted to buy?
• 24:04
  So.
• 24:05
  But the book part was great.
• 24:06
  That was great.
• 24:06
  And.
• 24:07
  And we use books a lot in the Dan Kennedy world as a, you know, as a lead magnet or as a competitive advantage or whatever.
• 24:15
  If you haven't written a book, don't.
• 24:16
  Don't fry.
• 24:17
  If you have a favorite book that you like, share that with a client and send it with your next proposal, and you'll see how much, how much, how.
• 24:24
  How much better of a job you'll get on closing rates.
• 24:26
  If you send them some books along with a printed copy of your proposal in a FedEx package.
• 24:31
  Can't do that for a $300 job, but you can do it for a $10,000 job.
• 24:35
  Sure.
• 24:36
  All right.
• 24:37
  So when you had the idea to write the book, like you said, you just did it.
• 24:42
  There's typos in it.
• 24:43
  How long did it take you to get the book written from when you had the idea.
• 24:46
  So I wrote it twice.
• 24:47
  I wrote the first book and my wife read it and said, this isn't what you're trying to say.
• 24:51
  This is terrible.
• 24:52
  So, okay, I went back and rewrote.
• 24:54
  Took me about six or seven weeks to write the book to get into its basic form.
• 25:02
  I, I probably could have done it today.
• 25:03
  I could probably do it about 30 days.
• 25:05
  I then handed it to an editor to kind of clean up the thoughts because as right.
• 25:09
  I'm not a professional writer and at the time I just used a professional editor from UPWORK and said, I hired a retired or semi retired university professor who was just looking to edit books.
• 25:21
  And she said, Brian, I like this, I don't like this.
• 25:23
  This doesn't make sense.
• 25:24
  This should go here, this should go there.
• 25:25
  So she, they call them developmental editors.
• 25:27
  And so I hired her to like to help me develop it.
• 25:30
  And then I took it across the finish line myself.
• 25:32
  I self published it on Amazon.
• 25:34
  I hired an artist to do a book cover.
• 25:36
  I hired a layout person to do the layout for me.
• 25:40
  I'm not a bestseller.
• 25:42
  I've probably sold 100 books on Amazon in the last seven years and I don't care.
• 25:46
  But it's done probably close to seven figures of consulting and certainly done seven figures of work over that time just because of people that have gotten my book as a part of my sales process.
• 25:56
  Right.
• 25:57
  So being a bestseller is just a bunch of, It's a vanity metric, right.
• 26:00
  I can be a bestseller tomorrow.
• 26:02
  I could just hire a bunch of people, give them 10 bucks a piece to buy my book on Tuesday at 2:00 and you know, you can be a bestseller.
• 26:08
  It's fabricated, you know, they call it fabricated celebrity.
• 26:12
  You can do that now.
• 26:14
  But the fact that you have it, you wrote it, is a fantastic experience.
• 26:17
  And if anyone has a chance to do it, it's so cool.
• 26:20
  It's such a cool process to do.
• 26:23
  Yeah.
• 26:23
  And I love, you know, like you said, just get it done, right.
• 26:29
  You wrote it, you made mistakes, you hired people, you figured it out, you put it out there.
• 26:33
  And then not getting caught up in the vanity metrics, but like it turned into real business, right.
• 26:39
  Real clients, real money.
• 26:40
  Even if you're not quote, a bestseller.
• 26:43
  I mean, you know that that's what it's about for an entrepreneur is how is it going to benefit.
• 26:46
  Benefit your business?
• 26:47
  Absolutely.
• 26:48
  And for me, right, that was the, that was kind of the key.
• 26:51
  Dan Kennedy taught us that that was one of the keys as a.
• 26:53
  Basically, you know, being a be in a category of one.
• 26:55
  If you wrote a book and you're a consultant or you provide services to companies, you're going to be in a category of 1.
• 27:02
  Everyone else is going to be fighting on price, and they're going to have the book on your bookshelf.
• 27:06
  And Dave and I are on video.
• 27:08
  As you're listening to this, I still have people I talked to five years ago.
• 27:12
  This is Brian.
• 27:12
  I still have your book.
• 27:13
  I still have your book.
• 27:14
  I'm like, people throw away.
• 27:17
  Someone did a study on this.
• 27:18
  People don't throw away books.
• 27:19
  Typically a newsletter or another print magazine that's more than four pages they'll keep for three to four months.
• 27:26
  A letter, they'll keep a month or two.
• 27:27
  Or go with the garbage.
• 27:28
  A postcard they'll they'll keep for a week or two.
• 27:31
  And an email, they'll get it.
• 27:32
  They'll look at it for like three seconds.
• 27:33
  Which, which category?
• 27:34
  Which.
• 27:35
  Which place do you want to be?
• 27:36
  I know where I want to be, so.
• 27:39
  Okay.
• 27:40
  And also, along the way, you started a podcast.
• 27:44
  I started a podcast just like Dave's, although we serve a different audience.
• 27:49
  I started a podcast with an idea called.
• 27:51
  It's called Drive with the Driveway Marketing podcast.
• 27:53
  There's only about 20 episodes.
• 27:55
  I got called out on Friday because I did like seven or eight.
• 27:58
  And then of course, I stopped because it was making business turn and stuff like that.
• 28:02
  And I, of course, like any good entrepreneur that has some success, I stopped doing what works.
• 28:07
  So he called me out on it.
• 28:08
  So I did five on Saturday.
• 28:09
  Anyway, yeah, it was a great.
• 28:11
  It's a great experience.
• 28:13
  Our purpose on that podcast is to help people in the home services industry.
• 28:16
  It's one of the.
• 28:17
  One of the.
• 28:18
  One of the.
• 28:18
  One of the niches we serve because we have an offer for them, right?
• 28:22
  We can help them do less and grow without having to do some of so much of the heavy lifting.
• 28:26
  But also, my wife and I own a home services business.
• 28:29
  My wife and I own an interior design business.
• 28:31
  And so that.
• 28:31
  A lot of the same techniques, you know, that I teach, that I share, that we do, she does, too.
• 28:37
  And so we see the direct, you know, we see the direct results from the doing and not thinking about it.
• 28:43
  So that part of it's kind of cool.
• 28:45
  And.
• 28:46
  And obviously, as you know, no one's moving out of their houses.
• 28:52
  Nobody's, you know, the trades are in massive demand.
• 28:55
  The home services niche isn't going away.
• 28:58
  It's AI in My mind, it's AI proof you're not going to, you know, no plumber is going to get out, right?
• 29:03
  So no, no carpenter, no carpet cleaner is going to get out.
• 29:06
  So I think there's a long term, long term play as an investor in the business and they're still going to need support.
• 29:12
  Now I think our role as a supported sales support is going to change over time.
• 29:16
  But I can tell you from experience that people that spend lots of money on ads, they don't answer their phones or answer their emails and they wonder why their ads aren't working.
• 29:27
  Number one complaint for marketing agencies is that you don't follow up on the leads because companies want job booking services and marketing agencies provide leads.
• 29:37
  They're not the same thing.
• 29:39
  Leads are opportunities and sales is sales.
• 29:41
  Someone's got to close the gap and usually they're just looking for someone to respond to them.
• 29:47
  Most, most Companies don't respond.
• 29:48
  80% of companies don't pick up the phone that they list on their Google my business profile.
• 29:55
  80%.
• 29:56
  80% I called.
• 29:57
  So this is based on our own.
• 29:59
  This is not a study, this is what I paid for.
• 30:01
  We called 4,000 people in three states in like four home services niches and only 18% actually picked up their phone.
• 30:11
  So it's less than that.
• 30:12
  So 82% didn't answer the phone.
• 30:15
  Of the people that answer the phone, only like 10, only like 15% could provide us information directly right there.
• 30:22
  And a lot of times it was just an answering service to call back, which I give them credit.
• 30:25
  They did at least do the callback, right?
• 30:27
  So they did answer the phone, but 80%.
• 30:29
  So they paid for that traffic.
• 30:30
  Think about that.
• 30:31
  They paid for the ad.
• 30:32
  They paid for someone to put their phone number listing and you know, plumber near me, carpet cleaning near me, someone put it, or they did it themselves.
• 30:40
  So they're generating traffic, but they didn't bother to pick up the phone.
• 30:43
  Another thing was crazy of some of the people that didn't pick up the phone.
• 30:48
  I want to say like a third of them didn't even have a way to leave a voicemail message.
• 30:52
  But imagine that you're going to have people call.
• 30:53
  Now there may be technical reasons why that happened.
• 30:56
  Like they didn't have a, they hired an agency and the agency turned off something or whatever.
• 31:00
  But, but imagine you don't even, you can't even leave a message and Right.
• 31:04
  And so I talked to my friends, like my personal friends are in the business and they're going, well, yeah, I don't do that because it's a giant pain in the butt.
• 31:09
  Because I got all I get are spam calls.
• 31:11
  I'm like, but the customers call too, right?
• 31:13
  Don't customers call?
• 31:14
  Well, they can fill out my form on my website.
• 31:16
  I'm like, you know, mom sitting at the soccer field on Saturday isn't going to fill out the form.
• 31:22
  Right.
• 31:22
  Or 10 o'clock in the morning at break, whatever.
• 31:25
  She just wants to call someone, get the carpet clean.
• 31:26
  She wants to call someone to get the house clean.
• 31:29
  You know, husband says, you know, you got to get the gutters clean.
• 31:32
  There's a storm coming.
• 31:34
  He's not filling out three forms to hope someone emails him back.
• 31:36
  He's going to call people and see who answers the phone.
• 31:38
  First one answers the phone.
• 31:39
  If the price is reasonable.
• 31:40
  Can you book it for Saturday?
• 31:42
  Absolutely.
• 31:43
  So it's, it's, it's maddening.
• 31:46
  Yeah.
• 31:46
  And that's, that's another distinction too.
• 31:48
  Right.
• 31:48
  And I guess the, the way I look at that too is because I see that in, in other businesses in our industry is like thinking with the customer in mind.
• 31:58
  Like you said, well, oh, they can just fill out the form on my site, but the customer is not going to want to do that.
• 32:03
  You know, like you said, if it's soccer mom and Saturday morning.
• 32:06
  Right.
• 32:07
  So how much missed opportunity is that?
• 32:09
  Because entrepreneurs aren't thinking like their customers thinking.
• 32:13
  I mean I'll, I have a Vance Morris if you, if I'll give you the link.
• 32:18
  Dave.
• 32:19
  You prefer to Dave.
• 32:20
  Hope that's okay.
• 32:21
  Sorry about that.
• 32:23
  I'll give you a link.
• 32:24
  Vance Morris is a friend of mine.
• 32:25
  He owns a carpet cleaning company in the middle of nowhere in Maryland.
• 32:29
  And better than 85% of every, every inbound inquiry for him turns into a paying job where the industry average is 40% at best.
• 32:38
  So tell that.
• 32:39
  And so as a, as a result, he's, he was one of the highest per revenue locations for a national franchise before he decided to go on his own because of that.
• 32:48
  Because they, he's like, we're going to always answer the phone, we're always going to answer emails.
• 32:52
  And then the reason I got into the business is because he's like, Brian, I've been through my third service in the last year.
• 32:57
  Can you please do this for me?
• 32:58
  So we have a dedicated person supporting him during business Monday through Friday and half a day Saturday.
• 33:03
  So that's the teller's opportunity.
• 33:05
  So his business is hands off.
• 33:06
  Everyone wants a hands off business business.
• 33:08
  I know for a fact Vance probably Spends four or eight hours a week on his carpet cleaning business because he's spending the rest of the time on his consulting business.
• 33:16
  So he just makes sure that, you know, keeping an eye on things, keeping the team staffed, that kind of stuff is what he does.
• 33:21
  But he's not cleaning the carpets, he's not booking the jobs, he's not booking the follow ups.
• 33:26
  He's got a manager that manages the team.
• 33:28
  So he's literally outside the business.
• 33:30
  So now did it happen overnight?
• 33:31
  Absolutely not.
• 33:32
  But he was adamant.
• 33:34
  Like he was always picking up the phone.
• 33:36
  Someone was.
• 33:36
  And I, when the business first started, I'm sure it was his wife.
• 33:40
  And then as he was, then it was him, you know, he would turn off the machine and pull out the old flip phone and answer the phone.
• 33:47
  Right.
• 33:48
  I just think it's such a critic.
• 33:50
  We all thrive for communications and kind of contact and connection that if you can just do that by answering your phone, even if you don't know the answer or can't talk, just answer the phone and call them back.
• 34:01
  Right.
• 34:01
  Hey, I'm gonna be on job.
• 34:03
  I can call you back in 30 minutes.
• 34:04
  Is this the right number to call you back at?
• 34:06
  I don't have my schedule in front of me.
• 34:07
  I'm just finishing up a job with a client.
• 34:09
  That will be a perfectly acceptable answer.
• 34:11
  And then you call back 30 minutes later and you're gonna get that job nine times out of 10, it's just nice if that's like the one thing.
• 34:17
  Just, you know, just answer, answer.
• 34:20
  Just go ahead and try to get a project done in your community.
• 34:22
  Like, I just hope a contractor calls me back.
• 34:24
  Really?
• 34:25
  That's who you wanna do business with?
• 34:26
  The only guy that calls you back?
• 34:30
  Yeah.
• 34:30
  Little things that make such a big difference in E commerce.
• 34:33
  Right.
• 34:33
  How important is it now to have a chat support?
• 34:35
  I don't want to fill out a form and find out where my stuff is.
• 34:37
  I want to talk, I want.
• 34:38
  I may not want to talk to somebody, but I certainly want to chat with somebody.
• 34:41
  Where's my stuff?
• 34:42
  Could you tell me now?
• 34:44
  Can AI do that?
• 34:45
  Sure.
• 34:45
  But can AI get it there all the time?
• 34:47
  Maybe, maybe not.
• 34:49
  But at least I can get some immediate feedback.
• 34:51
  People are looking for, you know, humans are looking for immediate feedback.
• 34:53
  Feedback.
• 34:53
  I think so, yeah.
• 34:56
  All right.
• 34:57
  And Brian, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your services, what you do, what's the best way people can do that?
• 35:03
  So I think the two best areas, you can obviously go to stuckonfirst.com if you want to buy a copy of my book that comes from me, I'll send you an autographed copy of a book.
• 35:11
  It's just a seven or eight bucks shipping and handling.
• 35:15
  The other thing is you can do is if you want to go to MVP inner circle.com that basically gives you an outline of the different ways we help people and then our fulfillment sales support business you can find@mvpteampro.com
• 35:29
  so those are three places you can find Brian or you can just google my name and follow me on LinkedIn.
• 35:34
  Anyway, any of those ways are perfectly acceptable.
• 35:38
  All right.
• 35:38
  And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 35:41
  All right.
• 35:42
  Well Brian, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
• 35:44
  Enjoyed our conversation learning all about your journey and yeah we appreciate it and best of luck to you.
• 35:50
  Thanks everyone.
• 35:51
  You guys have an amazing day.
• 35:52
  Thanks so much for having me.
• 35:53
  All right, we will see you next time.